


Looking Glass AU's

by Feynite



Series: Looking Glass [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, fic of a fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5247422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Formerly my dumping ground for all Looking Glass AU's, now relegated to the place for standalone AU shorts as I sort the larger ones out into their own beasts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The NSFW Crack Fluff Threesome of Doom

**Author's Note:**

> The one where Lavellan dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Lavellan has both Pride and Solas and somehow this happens.
> 
> Edit: Now updated! With more sexings!

“We are not solving this with a threesome,” Lavellan had said.

She distinctly remembers having said that.

With those exact words, even.

Considering that, she’s not exactly sure how things have degenerated to this point. Or why she keeps worrying that Haninan and Curiosity are going to show up at any given moment and start rating people on their performance, with some kind of tally board keeping score in the background.

Because the scene is thus:

She, Lavellan, is sitting unclad on the edge of Pride’s enormous goddamn bed.

Pride, who owns said enormous goddamn bed, is standing to one side of her, with a face as red as her old Inquisition formal jacket, and not a single stitch on him, either.

Solas, of course, is equally naked on her other side; managing much more composure and far less blushing, and also aiming a pretty scathing look of disdain towards Pride.

It feels like she’s hit her head and woken up in one of Varric’s novels.

One of his really, really bad novels.

“Has anyone in this room ever actually participated in a threesome before?” she wonders. “Because I have not.”

There is a pause.

Solas inclines his head.

“There has been a time or two,” he admits.

Pride glares at the floor.

“No,” he says.

Solas snorts.

A sudden suspicion niggles at her mind, and she finds herself looking at Pride a little more closely.

“Have you ever had any sex before?” she asks him.

He opens his mouth, and closes it again, wordlessly.

“No,” Solas answers for him.

Her heart sinks.

Oh.

Oh no.

No, she is absolutely not saddling him with a competition for his first sexual experience.

“I am calling it off,” she declares.

Pride, if anything, looks even more mortified.

“No!” he insists, determinedly. “I may not have experience, but I am not without education on the subject. I am sure I could please you, if you let me try.”

Well.

Dammit.

“It is not about that,” she tells him, as soothingly as she can manage to. This young wolf who is but is not Solas, who has none of his weight of suffering yet, pulls such soft feelings from her. Comparably strong as the ones she holds for his other self. She gives in to a surge of protectiveness, and rises from the bed, moving to stand in front of him.

“It should not be a competition, your first time. It should be learning. Discovering things about yourself and the act with someone you trust,” she reasons.

He stares back at her, still painfully red.

Then he reaches out and brushes a hand against her cheek, touch almost feather light.

“I trust you,” he says.

Behind her, Solas sighs in exasperation.

“I believe what she is trying to say is that it is high time we gave up this farce, and found you someone more appropriate to chase,” he declares.

Pride glares at him.

“Or perhaps we should find you someone a little closer to your age,” the young wolf snaps back.

She rolls her eyes, preparing for another round of pissing contests; but then Pride reaches for her and, taking her by surprise, swoops down to kiss her.

Or at least, she thinks that’s the intent; he actually just manages to mash their noses together first, and then whips back, expression crestfallen at his obvious miscalculation.

“Smoothly done,” Solas drawls.

Pride looks mortified.

She doesn’t exactly think about it, really. It just seems natural to reach back for him with her hand, for that face, soft and familiar-yet-not. Take a step forward and press a proper kiss to his lips. Patient, gentle, showing him how it actually works.

He exhales when she lets him go. A soft puff of breath. Then he puts his arms around her and leans back in again, less hastily and with more care this time, catching her lips and parting them when she coaxes him with her tongue. Warmth spreads through her. Slowly growing, prickling under her skin as she slips her hand to his chest and he presses one of his own against her lower back.

“Very generous of you,” Solas says, and she almost jumps when she realizes that he’s come to stand almost right behind her.

“It was not a hardship,” she whispers.

Pride smiles at her.

Solas’ hand drops to her shoulder.

“Vhenan,” he says, low and husky.

She turns towards him, and he pulls her to his own arms; surges towards her mouth, and draws her into a passionate embrace. He tilts his head and slips a hand down to her backside, clutches her until he drinks the breath out of her, and the warmth already spreading through her pools into a liquid heat at bottom of her belly.

When he finally pulls back, he presses his forehead against hers.

“My love,” he whispers.

She tilts her head and steals another kiss from him; seeking more of it.

It’s only when she hears a heartbroken sigh that she pulls back again, and looks over and sees Pride’s nervous and crestfallen expression.

She pulls away from Solas again, to go to him.

“It is alright,” she tells him.

“I am sorry,” he says, reaching out and taking her hand. “I do not know how to please you as he does. But I would give anything to please you however I may.”

Solas scoffs.

“Of course you would,” he mutters.

She turns back to give him a reprimanding look.

“Stop being cruel!” she says. It’s generally so unlike him; but he’s always so willing to make a particular exception for his own younger self. Still. She finds it deeply unattractive at the moment.

“Please,” Pride says, gently. “Show me how to please you.”

That…

A shock of surprising arousal jolts through her.

“Fine line,” Solas dryly praises.

Line or no, that is very hard to resist, she decides.

“Come here,” she tells him, and moves in for another kiss.

Then she threads her fingers through his, and urges him towards the bed. 

Despite his request, she finds herself pressing him back, catching his uncertain gaze for a moment, before she trails kisses down his stomach, and turns her attention to his growing erection.

He gasps when she takes him into her hand; shudders when she runs her tongue along his head.

When she starts to swallow him, the noise he makes sends her heart flipping over, and she withdraws, briefly, to press a kiss to his soft skin instead.

“It is alright; I have you,” she tells him.

Then she proves it by taking him again.

He reaches for her, running his fingers across her scalp and resting his touch at the back of her head; not pressing her closer, though. As if he is afraid to. She traces comforting circles across his hips with her thumb, and moves a little more urgently, bent over him as he lies on the mattress.

A touch brushes down the back of her leg.

She pauses; hums a little as the touch moves up to her lower back, and then trails down again, a light caress that makes her skin tingle in its wake.

Warm lips press against her thigh. A ghost of a breath against sensitive flesh. Then familiar fingers move towards her folds, teasing and distracting. She shifts her hips into the touch, unthinking, caught between the heat growing there and the warm flesh parting her lips.

When a tongue replaces the fingers, she moans.

Pride comes.

Not really a surprise, all things considered. He doesn’t give her a warning but she manages to anticipate it in time to avoid choking anyway, which is nice.

It also gets her attention back onto him, and she swallows, kissing his stomach as he shudders and caresses her face.

The ministrations behind her withdraw, briefly; an arm closes around her waist and she finds herself scooped backwards, Solas pulling her flush against him, pressing a kiss to the joint of her neck before sliding a hand down her hip and back to his task.

“And now that you have tended him, perhaps I can demonstrate how you should be cared for,” he says.

“It is not a competition,” she tells him, though it’s hard to maintain any irritation with his hand working her apart like that, drawing little electric shocks of pleasure from her every time he brushes and curls his touch just so.

Solas just hums against her, slipping his free hand up towards her breasts.

Her breaths turn ragged, and she blinks and sees Pride, still sprawled out in front of her; beautiful as the man behind her, spent and splayed out. But his gaze on them is surprisingly sharp. His tentativeness is giving way, and she wonders if Solas realizes that his younger self does, indeed, seem to be cataloguing exactly what he’s doing.

As if he’s just fully accepted the challenge presented by his other self.

Between the two of them, she thinks, they’re probably going to kill her.

Well. Death by Dread Wolf was always unfairly likely, one way or another.

She lets her reactions show a little more than she usually does; exaggerates just a bit. It seems to work on both counts, as Pride’s gaze narrows and Solas’ erection twitches against her. Pressing into her.

After a moment, she turns in his arms, and sweeps her remaining one up along his neck. Presses her hand against the back of his head and pulls him in for a kiss. He meets her, eagerly, running his teeth across her bottom lip until she breaks away from his lips to suck at the side of his neck instead.

Some of his own ministrations lose a bit of their coherence as she brushes up against his erection, and she grins.

Take care of me, hmm? she thinks, trailing her hand down his arm, and gripping him by the forearm. Little full of yourself, aren’t you, ma vhenan?

That won’t do.

In one swift moment, she turned him towards the bed, and then puts her warrior’s physique to good use and playfully tosses him to the mattress. Right next to Pride.

He lets out a huff of surprise.

She smirks at him as he opens his mouth, but he only manages to let out an involuntary groan when she dips down and, swift as she can manage, swallows him.

It takes more doing to unravel him than Pride, of course. She slides her hand in behind his backside, pressing him upwards into her as she hums and sucks and works over his warm flesh. He tries to push her back again, but isn’t quite insistent enough to succeed when she moves her hand and catches his, instead, threading their fingers together and looking up at him as she takes him deep as she can.

She very heartily approves of the sound he makes at that; halfway between a moan and a curse.

Her jaw is aching a bit when he finally comes, so it’s a relief in more ways than one. She smirks and kisses his stomach as well, and then steps back, staring at the both of them; still obscenely aroused, but willing to put off tending to that in order to savour the moment.

“Well,” Pride drawls at Solas. “You certainly showed me.”

“Shut up,” Solas eloquently replies.

She laughs, and, giving in to temptation, climbs onto the bed between the two of them.

Perhaps she can work with this after all.

“You two really need to be kinder to one another,” she says, and not for the first time. Imagine if they could work together. The thought flits through her head, and initially comes by as just a general sentiment; but then she actually thinks of them _working together_ in the current context, and.

Well.

Hmm.

“I want you both,” she says. She wants them both; she wants the whole of _him_ , in either incarnation and in any way. She wants the young, hesitant, eager but inexperienced lover; she wants the old, skilled, scintillating and capable one. She wants the Solas she first fell in love with and the Pride who hasn’t broken her heart yet. These two different points on the timeline of the same man; these two different men.

She looks at Solas.

She looks at Pride.

“If we are doing this, then we are doing it,” she says.

So saying, she kisses Solas, and then moves to where Pride is lying, and kisses him, in turn. She parts his lips and sinks a hand into his hair, and beckons Solas closer as she settles against his younger self.

“What did you have in mind?” Solas asks, all but whispering in her ear as he leans forward, and plants a kiss behind it.

Pride looks at her, and she brushes a hand across his cheek.

“I will take Pride,” she says, softly. “And you will take me.”

Solas moves a hand to her hip, stroking in long, gentle touches. Pride’s brow furrows. He glances towards his older self, and then back at her.

“How is that meant to work?” he wonders.

Solas chuckles.

“Are you certain?” he asks her, ignoring the question.

“I should be asking the two of you that; I am not the one who is uncomfortable with anyone else here,” she points out, and so saying, brushes a hand to Pride’s cheek. He’s already made it fairly clear that he’s not willing to back down or withdraw; but she needs him to know that he _can,_ that proving himself in this context doesn’t matter nearly as much as being safe and comfortable and fine with what’s happening.

“I do not want anyone doing anything they do not wish to,” she tells them both; though she is looking at Pride.

“I wish to,” Pride insists.

Solas sighs against her.

“As do I,” he says, quietly.

Still. They go slow, with soft kisses and careful touches. She guides Pride’s hand to her, and lets him explore her with his touch, as she leans back against Solas. She runs her hands over both of them, stoking them back up, marveling silently over the similarities and differences between them. She knows the map of Solas’ body; and it is the same shape as Pride’s, of course. It makes her wish for two hands again.

And then Solas moves and retrieves a bottle from the bedside table, and runs a hand down her back as she bends over Pride. Pride, who closes his arms around her, and helps her keep her balance. She draws him into a kiss as Solas spreads cool oil over her; drawing a line of it down her skin, and warming it as his clever fingers work both of her entrances open to his satisfaction. His fingers are a gentle, coaxing slide; he draws it out, working up the delicious heat in her, and making her nerves sing.

“What is he doing?” Pride asks.

She is a little breathless, and at first can only press her lips reassuringly to his, and then draw them down to his neck. His own hands come up, caressing her upper arms; stopping just shy of where one of them ends.

“I am stretching her open,” Solas tells him, much to her surprise. “So we do not injure her.”

Pride looks at her, and moves one of his hands to cup her cheek.

“You do not have to,” he tells her, his voice barely more than a whisper. “You – we – we should not… I do not wish to risk hurting you. I will withdraw.”

Drawing in a breath, she nuzzles his cheek. Solas relents, a bit, moving his touch to less sensitive areas as she tries to gather her thoughts. She closes her eyes, and breathes in the scent of oil and sweat and sex.

“It is alright,” she tells him. “Withdraw if you want to; we can stop right now.” Oh, part of her would hate that; the part of her that’s on _fire_ would scream if they stopped now. But she wrestles it down. “But I am not in any danger. I will enjoy this, if we do it.”

She catches his eye, trying to convey her sincerity.

Pride kisses her, and Solas works another finger into her, and her thoughts scatter a bit.

“Alright,” the least experienced party in their three-way agrees.

She shifts around, then, straightening back into Solas again as she lines Pride’s erection up with her entrance. She sinks onto him, slow and steady, fighting the urge to just grind down as she takes him with care. He fits her so nicely. The sensation of him inside her, stretching her, filling her, is worth savouring; as is the look on his face as he watches her, entranced and clearly fighting to maintain his own control.

Solas runs a hand down her back.

“I could withdraw, instead,” he offers.

She reaches back, and grabs his wrist. Squeezes.

“Only if you want to,” she tells him. “Because I want you in me, too.”

Pride watches, his arousal and obvious desire to _move_ warring with his equally obvious curiosity over what exactly happens next. Solas works his fingers into her again, yet more oil sliding down from her and onto Pride; he shivers, and she grips him a little more tightly to keep herself up as Solas lines himself to her other entrance, and gently begins to press his way inside.

It’s…

She’s never felt anything quite like this before.

In a lot of ways.

She’s full, filled, already stretched, and then Solas comes and fills her further. The pressures of both of them in her, stretching her inner walls, are intense. Her nerves sizzle. Solas holds her hips, and Pride helps keep her in place, and the four hands on her feel almost impossible. It’s nearly too much. It’s nearly too much because it’s not just that she’s got them both touching her and pressing into her, and pushing together places in her that feel electrified by it; it’s that it’s _them,_ that it’s _him_ , and she loves Solas and she loves Pride, and they snap abuse and accusations at each other – at themselves, really, because they’re the same but not, in the end – but she has them, both, in a most literal sense.

“I love you,” she breathes.

Pride’s hips buck.

A choked, breathy gasp escapes her; nearly a laugh, really, as she fights to keep from being overwhelmed. Pride offers an apology, but she just tangles her hand with his and squeezes.

It takes some doing for them to settle into a rhythm. Pride tries to hold still but fails sometimes, and she doesn’t precisely want to discourage him moving, but for all the obvious connections, he and Solas don’t readily match one another for pace. Eventually she gets her own act together, though, and sets the pace for Pride; and then Solas matches her, and oh.

Oh.

The press and slide, both of them in of her and then out of her, is… it’s amazing. The heat builds up until she feels like someone has seeded a dozen suns beneath her skin. She gasps, breathless, offering incoherent praises as she moves between them. Solas at her back and Pride at her front. She cries out when she comes. When she slides back down onto Pride and Solas thrusts into her at once, hilts himself against her, both of their hands hot against her skin. The world goes bright and she feels like she is flying out of her own skin; and like she is bursting inside of it, as well, a firework caught between two stars.

She loses herself, a bit. Lets go, and lets them both catch her.

Pride goes next, not much more coherent than she is, it seems; and then Solas follows, shuddering and clutching her, his own voice breaking on a cry of her name.

They all pause a moment, panting in the slick, sweaty, breathless aftermath. All tangled together.

“Oh,” Pride says, as if he’s just had a revelation.

She lets out a long, sated sigh, and sags a bit.

And Solas actually manages a breathless chuckle against her.

Well.

…It looks like they might have just solved a few things with a threesome.


	2. Where Everything Goes Well, Then Pride Finds Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein everything goes well, and Pride doesn't learn the truth until afterwards.

He runs his fingers over the letters. The shining letters that she had written, in tribute, what seems so long ago, now; set to gleaming by Hildur, left in the layers of the Shaperate’s stone. Sung in a song that now rings through the core of the world.

_Solas._

Pride.

It had occurred to him that she did not ever say his name in elvish. A strange thought, dredged up as he learned the letters of ‘P-R-I-D-E’ in her tongue, and wondered on them. He had mentioned it, off-hand, and she had gone suddenly still.

“What?” he had asked.

“Nothing,” she had told him. “I just had not considered it.”

It had seemed, oddly, as if she was not being entirely truthful with him.

“I think I should like to hear it on your lips,” he had suggested; wondering at her sudden unease.

She had drawn in a breath. Treated him to a tight smile.

“Solas,”she had said.

Something about it had made his stomach drop, though he could not say what.

He could not say what, as he worked out the phonetic spelling of his name in her tongue. He could not say what, as he stared at the letters, and felt as if he had seen that combination before. He could not say what, as he sifted through his own memories in dreams.

He could not say what, until he left on a special errand, and begged this favour from the dwarves; and found his own name staring back at him from the stone.

_A wolf destroyed my world._

His hand shakes as he presses it to his mouth.


	3. Modern AU - Neighbours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: AU - late-teens!Pride has a major crush on 20-something neighbour Lavellan

Pride moves out of Mythal’s foster house when he’s nineteen. Just as soon as he can scrounge together enough cash to get out.

He’s in a hurry. It’s not the he doesn’t like Mythal or that she treats him poorly, or wants him to leave – it’s all the opposite on that front. But no one, he thinks, should be expected to put up with Elgar’nan for any longer than is absolutely necessary. Or Mythal’s other children, for that matter. They’re all horrible people.

Well. With the possible exception of Morrigan, who’s more irritating than anything, to be honest.

But the point is, he’s pleased to leave and quite proud of his ability to do so. He doesn’t have a lot of possessions to take with him. Mythal buys him a couch as a going away present, and he has a box full of books, and his computer. He gets a fold-out table, and then realizes all at once that he’s going to need basic things, like kitchen utensils and toilet paper. Moving in goes by quickly, though. The couch gets delivered, and Curiosity volunteers to help him get his mattress up through the apartment building’s staircase (the elevator is bafflingly small).

The stairwell’s not much better, and he wonders how anyone is  _expected_  to actually get furniture into their apartment – magic? Are there spells he’s meant to use for this? – as he and Curiosity work out a system whereby they shove the mattress over the railings and up the different landings towards one another.

It is… functional, but precarious.

“What do you think would happen if we just dropped it and it landed all the way at the bottom?” Curiosity wonders.

“I think I would spend the night on the floor,” Pride replies.

The idle wondering almost become prophetic, however, as on the very last landing, Curiosity goes to push the mattress towards him, and the end of it catches on the railing instead of going over. He reaches down to grab it, but his hands slip, and it’s too far over the edge for Curiosity to hang onto it alone. With sinking certainty, he thinks – knows – it’s going to fall.

The door out of the stairwell opens, a few steps away from him. There’s a sharp intake of breath, and then, before he can blink, a new pair of arms enters the fray. There’s a blur in the corner of his vision, and the stranger darts to the railing, and all but leans half of her body over it to snatch up the bottom of the mattress, and heft it towards him.

For one startling moment, he’s more afraid that  _she_  might go over instead. Whoever she is.

But then the mattress lifts, and she helps him pull, and both come away from the drop with no devastating casualties.

“Whew,” the stranger says. The mattress is blocking most of her from his view. But she cranes her head around it – a friendly face, probably not much older than he is. Dalish, but he almost doesn’t put that together past the broad stretch of her smile. “You guys look tired. Need some more help?”

Pride blinks.

“I mean I might as well, I don’t think I’ll get past until you’re through. And this is the top floor; it’s where you’re going, right? You must be moving in across from me,” the stranger carries on.

“That would be kind,” he says.

Then he watches, utterly useless for a moment, as she all but lifts the whole thing and drags it through the doorway behind her. He scrambles to help, then, but it doesn’t seem to be much needed. She’s dressed appropriately for the hot weather – a thin t-shirt, and shorts, and some light footwraps – and he can see the muscles of her arms working, tight and toned as she gets his mattress into the corridor for him.

Curiosity clomps up the remaining steps to catch them.

“I wish we’d met you at the bottom,” his friend says.

The stranger laughs.

“If you need any more help, I can probably spare a few minutes,” she declares.

“We wouldn’t want to impose,” he replies.

“By which he means, yes, absolutely help us,” Curiosity interjects.

That prompts another laugh from the stranger, who then proceeds to – almost single-handedly again – get his mattress into the apartment for him. In his defence, getting it up the vast majority of the stairwell was no easy task, and he’s tired, or else he’d almost definitely be more useful. As it stands, his new neighbour waves off both his apologies for the inconvenience and his thanks for the help.

“I get to spy on the inside of your apartment this way,” she tells him, with a wink. “Looks pretty much like mine. If you need anything, you can always knock on my door.”

She goes, then, and he must be even more tired than he thought because all he does is just stand there and watch her leave.

“Congratulations! You have a sexy neighbour!” Curiosity tells him, and claps him on the back.

His cheeks burn.

“ _Helpful,_  I have a  _helpful_  neighbour,” he corrects.

“That, too,” she agrees. 

~ 

It’s not that Pride spies on his  ~~sexy~~  helpful neighbour on purpose, because he certainly isn’t that creepy. But she seems to have a lot of friends, and the door to her apartment is frequently open, and conversation drifts out into the hall as often as not. She apologizes for the noise a few times, but he waves her off. They’re in their own corner of the building, and if the other tenants on their floor don’t care then  _he_  isn’t going to.

Which is how he more or less ends up learning  _a lot_  about her.

Like her name. And where she works. And that she’s friends with several humans and a few dwarves and at least one qunari as well as, unsurprisingly, a lot of Dalish. He also learns that she’s twenty-four, and she likes odd music, and she could probably throw him over her shoulders and carry him up a mountain without even getting winded.

He tries convincing himself that he doesn’t have a completely hopeless crush on her for about three weeks, and then just gives up. He does. He likes her. She smiles at him and holds doorways open for him, and winks, and when he goes on a book-buying binge after Haninan gives him his first paycheck, she helps him carry one of the bags up the stairwell and asks him all about his purchases and doesn’t even seem to mind when he rambles.

After the first month, he starts mentally rehearsing ways to ask her out.

Then he overhears her talking about a date, and deflates.

Of course. Of course she would be seeing someone else. It was silly of him to presume otherwise.

Well. At least he can still have her friendship, he reasons. He smiles at her and waves as she passes him by, talking on her cell phone, and when she catches sight of him her eyes light up a little, and she returns the gesture.

“Yes, Cass, he said six,” she says into her phone. “…I don’t know. Maybe?”

Then she disappears into the elevator, and he sighs, and gets out his keys.

At seven he gets a call from Haninan asking him if he can come help close the shop, because one of the part-timers called in sick. He heads back out, forgoing his usual layers in consideration for the weather, and then figures since he’s already out he might as well get something to eat before he goes home again. He crosses the street to where there are a few little bistros and restaurants lined up, and it’s as he’s considering his options that he sees her.

Sitting alone.

She’s got her chin on one hand, and her fingers are tapping at the tabletop.

 _She said six, didn’t she?_  he thinks, and checks his watch.

Just past eight.

For a minute he finds he’s more baffled than anything else. Who would stand her up? Was her date caught in some kind of horrific traffic accident? Kidnapped? Arrested and denied the use of a phone?

Then he feels outraged.

Then he looks at her face, and it’s a mixture of the two.

He debates, for a moment, before he heads down to the little outdoor table she’s sitting at.

She blinks up at him.

“Hello,” he says.

“Oh!” she replies, and despite the circumstances it seems she can still manage a smile for him. Not even a forced one; her lips just curl up, as if there’s something about him, the sight of him, that naturally makes her happy.

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling back if he tried.

“This is a coincidence. I work just across the street,” he tells her, gesturing towards the shop.

She looks over at it.

“You work for Haninan?” she asks.

“You  _know_  him?” he replies, surprised again.

She makes a so-so gesture. He’s beginning to think she knows everyone in the city, though, so it probably shouldn’t be too shocking at this point.

There’s an awkward pause.

“Have you eaten?” he asks.

She actually looks a little embarrassed. Why, he can’t fathom. It’s far more shameful to be the person standing someone else up, he’s sure, than the person who arrives at the agreed-upon location and politely waits for longer than they could fairly be expected to.

“I was going to meet someone, but…” she trails off, and shrugs.

“Perhaps I could join you instead?” he suggests. “I had planned on eating alone myself. But some company would be nice.”

He sucks in a breath, and steels his nerves.

“Particularly yours,” he adds.

She looks at him. Her smile spreads a little, and after a second she nods, and gestures to the chair across from her.

“So what’s it like working for Haninan?” she asks.

He lets out a breath.

“Fairly nice, apart from the baffling organizational system,” he replies.

They spend the rest of the evening chatting about various topics over their food. He makes her laugh, a few times, and it feels like an accomplishment on each occasion. She tells him random facts and stories about her friends. It’s not until they stand up to go that he realizes she’s wearing a dress; a simple, summery one, vibrant green and cut to flatter her quite nicely.

He offers her his arm.

“May I walk you home?” he asks.

She chuckles.

“As long it’s not too far out of your way,” she accepts.

It’s a nice night. The light is lingering, and there’s only a little traffic. The heat has gone from its stifling midday highs to something much more relaxed.

“Thank you,” she says, a little abruptly.

He glances at her.

“I should be thanking you, after such a pleasant meal,” he replies, and curses the heat that creeps up into his face.

“No. You definitely rescued me tonight,” she assures him.

His blush intensifies.

By the time they make it back to the building, she’s smiling again, and his heart is beating a little faster than usual. They stop in the hall between their apartments. Her hand gently slips from his arm, and he tries – and fails – to fight the urge to fidget with his sleeves.

“Perhaps we could do this again some time?” he suggests, tentatively.

She tilts her head. Her gaze goes soft.

“I’d like that,” she agrees.

Then she leans up, and presses her lips to his own. Just softly. His eyes flutter shut. Without thinking about it he finds himself following her back down for a few seconds, his mouth chasing hers until she smiles against him, and a spark rushes through him.

When they part, he blinks. And she looks at him, and then leans forward and kisses him again; gentle as before.

“See you,” she says.

He clears his throat, and makes himself straighten back up.

“See you,” he agrees, and watches her retreat through her door.


	4. Spirited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: What would LG!Lavellan and Pride's romance be/look like if Lavellan met met Pride when he was still a spirit? And how would it be when he got his body? (I started thinking about how it'd be like if Pride possessed Lavellan with the other spirits sans Sorrow)

She can’t find Solas anywhere in his own past.

It makes her wonder what the cost of his spell was. If he somehow… if doing what he did just erased him, in some way.

She tumbles into Mythal’s army in the midst of some skirmish or another with a different faction of elves. The evanuris thinks she belongs to them. Some tool, or experiment, or strange attempt at creating a spy. It almost gets her killed. Only the timely intervention of a Spirit of Valour spares her; and then she finds herself assaulted with magic, limbs regrown and eye replaced, and dragged along through the camps of a travelling army. Something between a trophy and a curiosity. Occasionally a punching bag for the soldiers’ frustrations.

One battered, warring world has been traded for another. Another where the magic works in vicious excess, razing and searing, and combatants stand on opposite ends of the field and do their best to tear one another to shreds before they ever set foot in it.

Familiar, in too many ways.

No one expects her to fight.

She doesn’t  _want_  to fight.

But the enemy elves are not terribly discerning in their targets. When a group of them strikes at the camp, she defends herself.

They aren’t expecting a combatant to get so close, to eschew magic entirely and strike out with blade and shield alone. She gathers weapons from fallen soldiers, throws kicks and punches as readily as cutting strikes, and it’s strangely easy to fall into the rhythm of battle. Fighting against impossible magics in hostile terrain. The steps are almost precisely the same; the movement, the strain of her muscles. The pain whenever something gets past her defences.

Mythal realizes that she is meant for battle swiftly enough, after that.

She isn’t permitted to stay behind in the camp anymore.

Cutting through Mythal’s enemies isn’t what she wants, though. She has no idea what she actually does want, but it isn’t this. She thinks about fleeing. No matter how carefully she asks, how many pseudonyms or alternatives she can think of, though, no one seems to know of any elf named Solas or anyone calling himself Fen’Harel.

She knows he was close to Mythal.

Staying close to Mythal, then, is her best bet for finding him. For… possibly figuring out what she is supposed to be doing, in all of this.

What is she doing?

It’s all just more and more death.

What are they even fighting for?

The glory of an empire, of course. Of the empire Solas sacrificed everything to restore. As petty as any other in history, she thinks.

And then the last battle comes, and it is an ugly thing. She can tell from the outset what it will be. The enemy, the Nameless, have taken over a village. Civilians and soldiers alike are threaded together, and they have children hostage. Mythal attempts to negotiate the terms of their surrender, but something goes wrong.

She’s not exactly sure what it is that sets everything off. It doesn’t surprise her, though. Horrible things so rarely do anymore.

The children die.

The elves go into  _agony_  over it.

The air changes with the ferocity of their grief and horror, more thoroughly than she’s ever seen it happen before. It’s almost like watching a rift tear itself open. Valour cannot take the strain of it. It twists, and rages, and when she reaches for it, it burns. Blue flames lash across it, and it looks at her with the eyes of creature who has just had everything it thought it knew flung back in its face.

Betrayed.

Betrayed by its own nature; by a world that made what it was into a lie.

It becomes Rage.

She grips at it, and for one terrifying moment, it sinks into her. Their anger bleeds together. Power crackles between them, and it almost… she almost…

It would be easier, at least, to not be so alone.

But no.

She pulls back. The spirit rages free, as is its nature, now, and plunges into the Fade. The tempest of the elves’ despair carries on, unbroken by these dramatics.

But the battle is ‘won’. This faction of rebel Nameless, as they have been called, has been repelled.

Mythal’s forces withdraw to her palace. Over winding roads and through elvuians into a deep forest, nestled within sight of a shimmering lake. She is afforded a new status, in the wake of it all. Has earned some small favour thanks to her contributions, apparently. Though she is still subject to suspicion. They write fresh vallaslin onto her face, and she is given duties that essentially seem to amount to being a guard. She is sent, frequently, to patrol the wilds around the palace. Looking for signs of interlopers, or weakening in the wards.

Forests are consistent throughout most times, at least. Even if that cannot always be said of the creatures in them.

That she is permitted to roam far is also fortunate when she discovers her ability to use magic.

She keeps this new talent to herself. Practices it amidst the trees and the isolated paths. The ones that trail off towards villages and lakes, and draw her eye down them, on certain days. Make her wonder what would happen if she just took off down one and left. Kept walking until she found something familiar. Sometimes spirits drift up and watch her, or even help her. Strange spirits of the wilds, that she doesn’t always learn names for. 

Rage reappears, after a time. The former Spirit of Valour is a colder sort of Rage than others she’s seen before. They don’t get too close again, but there is still an odd camaraderie between them. A strange comfort in venting their anger, in simply being furious and knowing they are not alone in that fury.

At the palace, the spirits are her easiest friends as well. A Spirit of Compassion, so like Cole and yet unlike Cole, offers her what it is best at. A Spirit of Curiosity peppers her with questions and promises to help her find answers. A Spirit of Sorrow often sits with her through the worst of her grief.

But strangely, the one she finds herself most drawn to is the Spirit of Pride.

It is an oddly beautiful spirit. She can’t quite put her finger on  _why_  she thinks so. It doesn’t look too much like a Pride demon, though it is big, and probably quite powerful. It is made of green light. Solid and steady, with six gleaming eyes, and a crown of crystal-like shapes spread out across his brow. It flows when it moves, and stands head and shoulders above most of the other spirits. Yet it seems more apt to pull them up along with it than to lord over them in any sense.

Its voice echoes and reverberates oddly, as if carrying the voices of many more with it when it speaks.

And it asks almost as many questions as Curiosity does.

“Where are you from?”

“What kinds of things do you know?”

“What are you skilled at?”

“What happened to them?” 

This last comes seemingly out of the blue.

She startles in the gardens, and nearly draws her blade on it.

Then she lets out a breath when she realizes it’s just a spirit.

“Who?” she wonders.

“Your people,” Pride asks, regarding her solemnly. “I can feel your pride in them, sometimes. But it gets overshadowed. I can see… something terrible became of them.”

She closes her eyes, and tries to ease some of her tensed muscles.

“They are all dead,” she says.

“How?” it wonders. “How can an entire people die?”

It speaks quietly. She would refuse to answer the question, but… she has trouble refusing this spirit most things. It wants to learn. It wants to know. Compassion tells her it wants to change its shape, to become something other than Pride; that it thinks its own nature is dangerous.

Everything is dangerous, though.

Even love is dangerous.

“I failed them,” she says. “I was supposed to save them. But I couldn’t find a way, and I couldn’t stop the wolf that killed them.”

Pride regards her solemnly for a long moment.

“You were not enough,” it concludes.

The truth of it sinks through her.

“No,” she agrees.

“Neither were they,” the spirit decides.

Her head whips up, at that.

“Do not ever say that!” she snaps.

Six ruby eyes blink, and then gleam a little. Pride peers at her, and this close she wonders if she isn’t drawn to it simply because of how like rift magic it looks, at times. Strange to think that the days of desperately scrambling to close the Breach could ever be thought of as her best, but there are moments when she would give anything to go back to them.

There is a strange nostalgia to the emerald gleam of it.

And then she has to shake her head at herself, because there is no going back. Not really.

Even Solas, in the end, had simply sent her in his stead.

“I want to see,” Pride declares, abruptly.

It’s her turn to blink at it, then.

“What?” she wonders.

“What is in you. I want to see it, all of it. Please,” it asks her. It bends in, leans towards her, and she has to pause because this is uncommon of it. Pride is always looking and listening and asking, but it almost never  _leans._  She has rarely seen it bring itself down to any other being’s level to communicate with them.

For an instant she wonders if it isn’t going to try and sweep through her there and then. But it only stops, and waits. Watching her face, and reading her closely.

Like she’s whispering, she realizes, and it’s trying very hard to hear her.

The green glow of it washes across her features.

Her left hand twitches.

“Alright,” she finds herself saying, very softly.

Pride is careful when it reaches for her.

Its fingers are tapered, light claws. They’re uncommonly solid, though, and envelop her own very gently, before it begins to sink beneath her skin. It’s… easier than the others, she realizes. Barely a whisper of strangeness, and then it’s just like the rush of closing a rift. Though less painful. The energy of it fills her up, and she feels tall all of a sudden, too. She feels like what Dagna once described to her, working with the red lyrium. Like a mountain, tied in countless threads to the people.

The People.

Her people. Who fought so hard, who strove for so much. Who managed to pull what they could out of the barest scraps left to them. Who struggled to survive, who dreamed of making a better world for themselves. Who stood against countless tides of aggression, and even when they were battered, beaten, and pushed beyond the brink, never failed to get back up again.

Her people, who survived slavery and war and exile to cling to what they could of their own culture. Who refused to be bound and chained again. Only to find that so much of what they’d preserved had been the remnants of yet more chains, and that the history they had struggled to keep was ever harder and bloodier than they dreamed.

Her people, who were finally destroyed for the sake of the past that they fought so hard to honour.

Her people, who should have been enough. Who were worth so much more than her failure, or his.

There is a great rush as Pride flows back out of her. She draws in a sharp breath, her eyes snapping open, and she knows this was a mistake. A terrible, foolish mistake. The Spirit of Pride is looking at her, aghast.

“No,” it says.

She takes a step backwards.

“No, it cannot be true. How could…?”

It knows. It figured it out; that she’s not from a distant land or other realm, but from the future of this one. That her people are the descendants of the ones living now. That they all sit upon the same thread of fate. Tenuous, and so easily snapped.

“Tell me it is not true!” Pride demands. “The People cannot be destroyed!”

Her jaw clenches, and she shakes her head.

“It is not true,” she says. “It was a lie, what you saw. A bad joke. You should forget about it.”

The spirit stares at her.

“I would like to believe that,” it says, in such a tone that leaves no doubt that it doesn’t believe it. At all.

She runs a hand across her face.

This spirit is one that’s close to Mythal, as well. If it spreads what it knows… she can’t say what would happen. Probably nothing good, though. Her position in this world is tenuous as it is. How she could figure out what to do, or where to go, without even the few advantages she’s managed to scrape together here, she can’t say.

Alright.

Damage control time.

“It will not happen that way again,” she says.

Pride stares at her, solemn; but it tilts its head.

“That is what you are here for,” it determines. “The wolf sent you back, because you are still trying to save the People.”

She pauses.

It’s… not untrue, but she hadn’t ever considered it that way before. Solas was also trying to save them, of course. And the people of this time are his far more than they have ever been hers.

But, she is still trying to save them.

However inadequate and hopelessly lost her efforts might be.

“I am,” she agrees.

Pride’s ruby eyes blaze at her, alight with a fierce determination.

“I will help,” it decides, much as Curiosity had also decided. “I will help you save the People. I will not let it happen as it did.”

She feels a brief flare of mingled unease and reassurance. A strange cocktail. But under the circumstances, she supposes it’s understandable. Pride is powerful and unpredictable, oddly compelling, and beautiful, but overwhelming and often near-sighted, too.

But that, she thinks, might just be her inclination to hold this spirit accountable for another who once carried its name.

“You should not speak of this,” she warns. “Not even to Mythal.”

She’s a little surprised when Pride readily agrees.

“We must know the consequences before we act,” it says. “That is wisdom.”

Her mouth curls a little wryly.

“That is part of it,” she agrees.

 

~

 

Sometimes she searches for Solas in her dreams. Reaching for… just, any sign of him. He is the biggest danger to the world, she thinks. The central point on which so many things can turn.

But, she knows that’s not really why she’s so desperate to find him. It is  _a_  reason. It’s not the only one. Not even now. Not even when the man she might find could be utterly unrecognisable from the one she knew.

_Vhenan, where are you?_

The landscape of the Fade in this time is bright and strange and shifting. A little overwhelming, especially at first. Her nightmares are drawn in stark detail. And stranger things, darker things, begin to pull at her after a time. Whispers that call to her. Snagging her away from even the familiarity of her usual mental horrors.

She walks atop a sloping surface made of dark glass, and with every step her feet sink at little more into it, until she is wading up to her hips. The surface parts in broken shards that scrape along her legs, and cut the fabric of her armour.

Emerald light shines down on her.

Six ruby eyes regard her steadily.

“This is strange,” Pride says, from where it has appeared in the midst of her struggle. “Where are we?”

Her next step towards him sends her shattering down through the whole of the darkness, all at once. Pride reaches for her, startled, but its hand comes just short of catching her. Then all the light is swallowed. She is being crushed and torn and twisted. The space is not, and it is; she is not there, but she should be. But nothing should be.

Voices scream in the cadence of a twisted song.

She wakes up, breathless, as her heart pounds in rhythm with the soul in her chest.

The ground is shaking.

There have been tremors before, but nothing like this. This violent upheaval nearly knocks her from her bed. It rattles through the room, and her bones rattle with it.

In the aftermath, the palace is thrown into a tumult of activity.

A fissure has split through one of the courtyards. There are a few injuries. Many delicate works of art have broken, and structural damage has been done. The air is one of outrage. Suspicion is flung towards the dwarves for launching some kind of an attack.

It reminds her of the Titan, more than anything.

Tasks are thrown her way. Hold this, carry that, deliver these messages, check this room for damage. When the chaos begins to subside, she retreats to mull over this development.

Mythal killed a Titan, once.

The evanuris discovering lyrium, and something else, seemed to have kickstarted a great deal of their decline.

She cannot afford to ignore these events, but she has no idea how to approach them, either. If something is going on with the dwarves, however… she has so little sway here. And her search for Solas has been fruitless. Perhaps it is time she followed one of those far-reaching roads on her patrols. There’s a chance she’ll have more luck with the dwarves.

If she can find them.

On her own.

In a virtually unrecognisable landscape.

Lost in thought, it takes her a moment to realize that her pursuit of quiet paths has led her into an occupied space. The corridor she’s in turns towards the lower chambers. The soft sound of footsteps, and the drifting lilt of voices reach her. She blinks, and looks up and sees shadows on the wall.

Past the bend, a small group is walking towards her.

Mythal, she thinks she hears, and some of her attendants. The emerald gleam to the light implies that Pride is with them, too.

She means to turn, and slip backwards until she can make her way down another path, and avoid them. But then she sees something in the shadows.

Another shape, moving, and the way it is moving hits something in her mind. 

Stealth. Hostility.

She strides forward instead, quickly, and rounds the bend to see Mythal, and Pride, and two others she doesn’t know the names of, and a fifth party sinking through the shadows of the walls like a spirit. But it is not a spirit.

Pride notes it almost as soon as she does. She calls out a warning, and draws her weapon; the spirit is already moving, putting itself between the attacker and Mythal. A dark blade strikes out at it. A single flash, and she is moving without thought, drawing her own weapon as part of Pride shatters with a wrenching noise.

She barely reaches her target, though, before the others realize what is happening. It is a flurry of spellwork, then. The assassin screams. She registers the odd, high ring of the sound as she grasps the injured spirit, and pulls the bulk of it behind her shield. Away from the flurry of magic that is now flying from Mythal’s own fingertips.

Whatever or whoever their attacker was, it doesn’t stand much chance.

Pride wavers in her grasp. Its injury is threading itself back together, though, strands of light closing as it blinks, and stares at the interior of her shield as if uncertain where it came from.

It brushes her gently aside, and rises as the assassin falls to ash and foul-smelling dust.

Mythal stares disdainfully down at it.

“Earthquakes and now assassins. What an eventful day.”

“This was a servant of the nameless. Some of the wards must have gone down thanks to the tremor. More may breach our defences,” Pride reasons.

“I wonder if the dwarves are working with our enemies now?” another elf muses.

“It certainly merits investigation,” Mythal decides. Then the evanuris glances towards her, and thence on to Pride. “Pride. Take this one and check the outer wards. Restore them if you are able to. Send word if you are not. I will have people begin scrying for intruders.”

Pride sweeps an arm to its chest.

She bows, herself, and keeps a careful eye on the spirit as they withdraw towards the outer doors. But its injuries seem to have vanished without a trace.

“Are you alright?” she nevertheless asks, once they’ve gained some distance.

It blinks at her.

“I was startled,” it admits. “I am not easily wounded. But I have recovered.”

She nods in acceptance. Though she finds her gaze still trailing, often, to the place where it had been hurt. That had been… unnerving to witness. She’s seen demons and abominations be slain, and wisps and wraiths, but never something quite like Pride. 

It takes her a while to chase the unease from her mind, as they make their way out of the palace gates, and into the perimeter wilds.

“The Nameless are People,” Pride mentions eventually, with an odd sort of thoughtfulness. The sunlight filtering through the leaves almost matches the scattering of light he spreads into the world.

“They are,” she agrees.

“But they lack wisdom. They are prideful; they will not bend, even if it would be better to,” it muses.

“Why do you think that?” she wonders. She’s never before met a spirit who disdained its own nature so much.

It seems… painful.

Pride blinks at her.

“Because, that is what I have learned,” it says.

“From where? And who?” she prods. The first ward they reach looks fine to her, but they pause a moment as Pride checks it. The edges of it gleam, before the spirit nods in satisfaction.

“From books, and spirits, and scholars, and Mythal,” Pride tells her, at last.

She nods.

“Some might say it is over-proud to think that one’s enemies act because they lack wisdom. That they do not bend because they cannot see sense, and not because they have something worth standing tall for.”

An image flits through her mind. Solas, hands behind his back; shoulders straight, but head dipping down, for a moment. Bending beneath the strain.

It pulls something in her before she can banish it.

“But it would be better if no one fought, and we worked together. That is what the evanuris wish for. For the People to reach the greatest of heights,” Pride reasons.

“And who is to judge the success? Who determines what greatness is?” she counters.

Then she lets out a heavy breath.

Debating matters of perspective with a Spirit of Pride.

Interesting, but she’s not sure she has the wherewithal for it.

Pride only tilts its head, though.

“Wisdom should decide,” it says.

That almost makes her laugh.

“So when you become Wisdom, you will decide for everyone?” she suggests. “I wonder, if you succeeded in changing, if you would not be so proud of the accomplishment that you would just turn right back.”

Pride gleams oddly, and looks almost - by the standards of a spirit - flustered.

Then concerned.

“Do you think that could happen?” it asks.

The odd twist to its expression makes her feel guilty for the jab, however gently it might have been meant. This is not, she thinks, a matter to make light of. Reaching for this. It matters to this strange and unexpected spirit.

“No. Forgive me. I was only teasing. I am no expert on spirits,” she reasons.

They walk in silence for a time.

“It is true, though,” Pride says, at length. “If I became Wisdom, there would be no reason to think I could not become Pride again, afterwards.” It looks as though the idea had never occurred to it, and it is not certain what to make of the revelation.

“I like you as you are,” she offers.

It turns towards her.

“Why?” it wonders.

The tone of its voice is strangely hopeful.

_I don’t know_  rests on the tip of her tongue. But she looks at the odd angles of its face - long, and sharp, and shining - and she knows that will not suffice.

“Pride can be many things. For my people, it was something to hold onto when life was at its most difficult. Anything in excess can be dangerous. That is not what pride is for, however, and you… to me, you are beautiful, like songs kept and passed down between generations because once they were written, people knew they had something worth remembering. All the accomplishments we keep, to warm us when we are laid low. To remind us of our worth. Knowing someone, once, was proud of them. That is what you make me think of,” she admits.

The spirit beside her trembles oddly, and she worries for a moment that she has said something wrong.

But it doesn’t burst apart or anything, so there’s that, at least.

“Oh,” it says, uncommonly soft.

They don’t say much else as they finish their patrol, then. A few of the wards need repairing, but Pride handles most of them itself. A light rain is beginning to fall by the time they trek back.

The atmosphere in the palace has not improved.

She considers, once again, what she could possibly do.

No answers readily presents themselves, though.

 

~

 

Pride stays close to her, after the earthquake.

When it is not with Mythal, it is usually by her side. Even more often than Compassion. A few of the elves she answers to offer her rather condescending warnings about the danger of getting ahead of her station. She has no idea if they think Pride has become drawn to her because she possesses an excess of it, or if they think Pride being drawn to her will result in a burst of egotism on her part, but it’s unnecessary either way.

Solas once told her that spirits could make for fast friends, and she is finding this to be true. Compassion offers comfort she will never be able to repay, and Curiosity is a source of great help and surprising insights. Rage is oddly kindred, oddly bound to her, and even Sorrow has a strangely anchoring presence she appreciates.

And Pride is…

Something else.

“I think I found more wisdom today,” it tells her, one evening as she hides in the peace of the smaller gardens.

“Oh?” she wonders.

It nods.

“Mythal is going to launch another campaign against the Nameless. But I think we should strike at the Children of Stone instead,” it declares. “Then we will deal with the problem, and we will not have to fight and kill more People.”

It looks very pleased with its conclusions.

“The Children of Stone are people, too,” she counters, as her stomach twists into knots.

“No they are not. They are a different thing. Like animals,” the spirit reasons.

“No. They are people,” she insists.

It frowns at her, shifting and shimmering a bit.

“They do not feel. They do not speak. They are like beasts.”

“They feel, just as I feel. They speak their own language. They are people, like me,” she tells it, plainly. Some of her frustration and anger leaks into her voice.

It looks uncertain, now.

“There are some that say you are not a person, and this is not true,” it concedes, to her surprise. Not that there are those who deny her personhood; but that it so easily accepts otherwise. “If you say the Children of Stone are like you… then perhaps I was not being wise after all.”

She hesitates.

“With what you thought was true, you were being… clever,” she concedes. Horrible, too, but it already seems to be turning that notion over in its own mind.

It wavers, and sighs, gustily.

“I shall not present the idea to Mythal, then,” it decides. “Either I would be wrong, and be embarrassed, or she would think I was right, and make a mistake herself. Those are what consequences I can see coming of it. It would be unwise to permit them.”

She blinks.

“Were you… running it past me first?” she wonders.

“I could not find the Spirit of Wisdom today,” Pride tells her, with a nod. “You speak much more, anyway. Sometimes Wisdom only makes tiny noises and does not offer opinions at all.”

She almost snorts at the unexpectedly petulant note to its voice. Its eyes fix on her, crinkled with warmth.

“But you are  _very_  opinionated,” it pronounces, with approval.

Against the backdrop of the narrow white trees behind it, it looks like a precious gemstone nestled into some rare ivory setting. The image is oddly captivating. All the pretty things strewn about this world, and yet, here is the first to really steal her breath away.

“I will take that as a compliment,” she decides.

“It is a good thing, I think,” Pride confirms.

Then it leans towards her again.

She blinks. But it extends no request, makes no attempt to grab her, and gives no other implication that it wants to join with her again. It just sort of sways towards her, in what almost seems like some strange, spirit-oriented approximation of affection.

It’s oddly touching.

And keeps up long after they leave the garden, it seems. Pride leans and sways. It reaches tapered fingers out to brush her shoulder, or even, most disarmingly, her cheeks. It asks her questions and entertains her own in return, until one morning she wakes to find it waiting outside of her room, the light of it trembling with disquiet.

“Do you think I will ever become Wisdom?” it asks, with startling intensity.

“Of course,” she finds herself saying.

It blinks, as if it had not expected that answer at all.

She shrugs.

“I do not know that it would make you  _better_  than you are, though. But I do not see why you could not do it.”

“Because I have not!” the spirit blurts, rippling with frustration, and an uncommon note of fear.

She raises an eyebrow.

“Having failed so far does not mean success isn’t possible. It just means you have not yet found the way,” she reasons. 

It doesn’t seem to reassure her friend very much, though. In the light of the hall, its reflection scatters across the mirrored mosaics lining the walls.

“What is troubling you?” she asks.

Pride stills, and then looks away from her.

“Mythal believes that matters with the Nameless will only turn more fraught in years to come. She has counselled me to abandon my hopeless quest for Wisdom, and take on a physical form instead. With a body, at least, I could be more than what I am now,” it explains.

Her heart clenches.

Pride, to take a…?

No.

No, she will not let her mind pursue that train of thought any further. Not right now. She cannot, it is… it would be too much.

But she cannot stall it, either.

Pride with a body.

Pride with a  _body._

Oh, she has been such a fool. Such a fool all along.

How often did her searching dreams land her in the presence of this spirit, after all?

Her mouth goes dry, and she has to fold her arms to stop them from trembling. She remembers Solas, so long ago, arguing against trying to make Cole more human. The way he spoke of the Fade, and of spirits. The way he looked at them, sometimes… the same way he looked at  _her,_ sometimes.

With a doomed sort of longing.

Oh no.

An emerald finger brushes against the side of her cheek.

She freezes.

“Why are you ashamed?” Pride wonders.

It takes her a while to find her voice.

“Because I did not see something,” she says. “But now I do.”

The spirit regards her in confusion.

She reaches up, and catches its hand. Gleaming and emerald, like the anchor. Slightly warm and smooth and strange, and yet it rests easily in her grasp.

Oh, she’s such a fool.

“Do not give up,” she says. “Do not abandon your dream. You should love being what you are. If that means becoming Wisdom, then become it. Strive for it. Do not take a body because anyone asks you to. Only ever take it if it is what you want.”

Pride’s eyes are wide as a tear slips down her cheek.

“Be happy,” she asks.

Then she retreats back into her room, before she breaks apart completely.

 

~

 

She leaves the next day.

She sets out for her patrol, blade and shield in hand, a small pack of rations pilfered from the kitchens folded into her pockets. The thought crosses her mind to leave a note, but there is nothing she can think to say that could be left safely in one.

Instead she simply sets out, letting her feet guide her down the first likely road.

_Dareth shiral, ma vhenan,_  she thinks.  _Stay safe in your dreams._

There is a world to be saved.

Somehow, she will find a way.


	5. Spirited, Short Continuation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: need a continuation of the spirit Pride double-au like i need air to breathe. that was so, so good omg. the way you wrote him is probably my favorite out of everything ive read of yours so far and ive read pretty much everything i could find

She finds her answers buried deep beneath the ground, in the heart chamber of a Titan, where she loses Solas all over again. 

She wakes to a profound sense of  _wrongness_  within herself. Pain, and broken. It’s all wrong, in her and around her. It’s all gone to hell, all over again, and she is alone. No one is coming for her. So much is left unfinished, so much must be done, but she can’t…

It burns.

Everything in her, it’s broken.

She drifts in and out of consciousness. In dreams she finds herself standing on her balcony at Skyhold, looking at the scar on the horizon. Pink-hued clouds drift past. The wind curls across the railing. She’s alone.

Alone.

Emerald light spills across her shoulders.

“You left,” the Spirit of Pride says.

There is an accusation in that, but more a question, too. Confusion. She turns to face it. At least it is a spirit still. Perhaps if it remains that way… perhaps, if changing the song for this one Titan can be enough…

“I am sorry,” she says.

It tilts its head at her, leaning closer.

“Why did you go?” it wonders.

“I had to do something,” she explains. “To save the People.”

It’s expression twists with disapproval.

“I am supposed to help you with that,” it reminds her.

She shakes her head. The dream is getting… tattered. Fading out. Whether it will fade to wakefulness, or if she will finally succumb is harder to say. Her chest hurts. Even here and now, though maybe that’s just her figurative broken heart using her real one as an excuse.

“What is wrong with you? You are…”

Pride trails off, eyes widening.

“I am sorry,” she offers again.

“No,” it says.

Then it reaches for her, curling around her; bright and insistent. A strangely fierce embrace. Something splinters inside of her. All around, the colours of the Fade bleed away. The grip on her turns sharp. Pressing. Hanging on the darkness pulls at her; and then as her eyes open, gasping, to the light of her cell.

It feels, for a moment, like she’s sitting in the middle of the Breach.

There is an emerald hand pressed against her chest.

Pride leans over her, eyes gleaming as the air around them distorts. Here the Fade is further away, pushed back almost as it had been with the Veil. The air around them feels tattered. She feels tunnelled through, herself; as if the spirit above her wrenched open a gateway through her dreams, and flung itself through.

Which is… probably what happened, actually.

Pride shines. Magic washes through her. It’s painful. Not in and of itself, but in the injuries it strikes within her.

“Do not die,” Pride instructs.

The healing light flares again.

She thinks she screams, a little, before falling unconscious once more.


	6. Unplanned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for unplanned pregnancy and heavy implications of abortion. Based off of a prompt on tumblr.

In hindsight, making love in that shrine was not a good idea.

At the _time_ it hadn’t seemed particularly perilous. At the time, it had just seemed like a nice, quiet place. Secluded. Comforting in its lack of pomp or ceremony, and compelling in the odd currents of magic that seemed to rush throughout it. She had stared, captivated, at the hollow walls and sunlight streaming in past overgrown vines and broken statuary, and it felt _familiar._ To be among ruins and ruined things. Antiquated structures.

She and Pride had been on a scouting mission for Mythal when they’d uncovered the place. Catching the telltale signs of old pathways, worn smooth by the claws of an ancient Keeper, until they’d finally discovered the entrance to the shrine. Most of the wards had faded it away, it seemed. And there were nests of animals all over the place. Some big enough to pose a challenge, when they’d first stumbled upon them.

Most of the ones left now are small and scurrying, though. Or roosting in the rafters. She’d seen dozens of kinds of birds, and snakes, and rodents, and lizards. Not precisely a romantic atmosphere, but when they’d opted to set up camp for the night there, the tent had been cozy and the ambiance unexpectedly quiet and compelling.

Pride had been watching her take in the temple. Her obvious homesickness made him quiet. But when they bedded down for the night, she’d found herself incredibly aware of his warmth beside her. Of the soft brush of his fingertips, when he touched her cheek. Of the shape of his lips, and the innate beauty of his profile. She was always at least _somewhat_ aware of him, though.

It really hadn’t seemed strange.

“Come here,” she had said. Her voice low and warm, and he hadn’t taken much encouragement. They’d tangled under the blankets. His mouth hot against her skin; his flesh smooth beneath her hands. It had felt right, to have him there, in those ruins. Another society that had crumbled. Another piece of the past, but so like the future; like time folding in on itself. She had wrapped her legs around him and whispered devoted words to him. Been captivated by his gaze on her. His eyes reflecting the light that filtered through the thin walls of the tent.

He was still careful. So careful, but she prompted him along; had him moving more surely, until the rhythm of his thrusts and the rock of her hips seemed to move in time with the strange, steady energy of the place. She called for him, when she came. Gripped him close and pressed kisses to him as he followed. So beautiful. They’d slept less than either of them expected to, in the end, going again as soon as they could.

The night had seemed to last a very long while, before she finally drifted off to sleep, with Pride’s endearments being kissed against her brow. But when they’d woken in the early morning, both of them had felt energetic, as if they’d slept the night away. She might have wondered if she hadn’t dreamed their entanglements, but for the love marks still pressed into Pride’s pale skin, and a dull, pleasant sort of aching in certain places when she stretched.

And then they’d finished cataloguing what they could about the temple, and they’d learned it was dedicated to the old mother and father gods, as near as they could tell. Then they’d packed up and left. And if they’d been more inclined to fall into one another’s arms on the way back than usual, well. It wasn’t as if they _hadn’t_ fallen into one another’s arms on the way _there,_ or as if they were ever particularly exceptional about restraint when both of them were alone, and in the mood.

Truly, the mood never struggled to find them.

It wasn’t until she began to feel strangely that a niggling unease plucked at her. There was no disease in this time, and yet she found herself taken by odd dizzy spells, and nausea. She grew tired more quickly in the evenings, as well.

Pride worried. He feared she was dying. That time had come for her, even though she assured him that it wouldn’t. But since she couldn’t explain away her odd symptoms, either, his worry persisted. She let him use his knowledge of healing magic to try to discern what was wrong with her.

In the end, she was infinitely glad that she hadn’t gone to any of Mythal’s healers instead. As Pride tested things and found nothing wrong with her, debating more and more and worrying more and more until at last he simply tried to diagnose any condition which matched her symptoms. Poisons. Residual damage from magic. Internal injuries.

Pregnancy.

He had cast the diagnostics spells for that one full six times, looking baffled and then concerned, and then fearful, and then conflicted. She hadn’t been quite certain what he was checking, at the time. But the look on his face had caught her, completely.

“What?” she asked.

“That should not be possible,” he had said, shaking his head, and frowning intently. “I would never have…”

His mouth had closed, and then he had stood up, and gone to ‘check something’. She’d followed him as he vanished into his bedroom, away from the main parlour of his chambers. But she’d stayed out of the door, listening as he cast his own spells, and then let out a sharp curse.

When he’d emerged, a moment later, he’d been pale and shame-faced. He’d looked at her, and opened his mouth. Then closed it again. Then he’d swallowed, and seemed to muster himself. Straightening his shoulders.

“My protections have failed,” he’d said. “That is not ever supposed to happen without my knowing it. It seems I have been incredibly negligent of myself.”

“What protections?” she asked.

He swallowed again, and seemed to have to force himself to meet her gaze.

“Ones relating to bodily chemistry. Specifically, reproduction,” he admitted.

Her gut twisted.

“Oh no,” she said. Her own voice sounded uncommonly small in her ears.

Oh no.

Pride reached for her; and then seemed to think the better of it, and folded his hands behind his back instead.

“It was my fault,” he said. “I am so sorry. I do not know how this could have happened. I would never, _never_ have done that to you intentionally. It is beyond reprehensible that I have done it to you by negligence. But I will take full responsibility for it. I will go to Mythal, and admit what I have done, and face the punishment for it.”

She’d blinked at him, as her mind skittered around the concept of _reproduction._ The tone in his voice and the prospect of him being punished at least gave her something more… typical, to be alarmed by.

“What punishment?” she had asked him.

His expression fell, despite his best efforts to put on a brave face.

“It is in violation of a great many firm laws to have a child without consent of a ruling leader,” Pride explained. “Populations must be carefully maintained to ensure that the distribution of resources is not unduly taxed. But sometimes allowances are made for extraordinary circumstances. I will tell Mythal what has happened, and see to it that you face no retribution.”

She looked at him for a long, quiet moment.

“Pride,” she said. “You are considered a person. I am not. You are Mythal’s trusted advisor. I am a curiosity she took in out of pity. She will not let you take the blame.” And even if Mythal _would_ , she thinks, the punishment she suspects he is leaving unsaid is not one she would ever let him endure.

After all, what better way to maintain numbers than to balance them again?

But her reasoning had cracked Pride’s resolve, at least. He had looked at her, solemn and frightened, remorseful, and yet when she reached out and took his hand something in him seemed to unwind a little, too. At least one fear easing its clutches upon him.

“I could… there are spells,” he admitted. “They are not terribly complex. I could halt the process.”

It took her a moment to parse his meaning.

Uncertainty flooded her.

“I have to think,” she decided.

“Of course,” he agreed. “There is a time limit, obviously, but not a great hurry. I… I am so sorry.”

She sighed.

“It was an accident,” she allowed. “They happen. More frequently in my own time, I suspect.”

Pride had accepted her forgiveness. Though mostly because it seemed he couldn’t bear to argue with her. She had squeezed his hand, but then left him awhile. Heading back to her own small room, to the quiet solemnity of her bare walls, and firm bed, and her own thoughts.

Pregnant.

Pregnant with Pride’s child.

Her mind turned that over and over again. In a world she was still barely able to understand, or come to terms with. With her life as it was. She looked at her hands, and felt lost. Back to square one all over again. What was she to do with this? She couldn’t look after a child. Not in a world where she herself was considered barely more than an entertaining sideshow, where such a happenstance was illegal, where she had nothing to offer and no future to promise, except that one she had become obligated to dedicating her all to secure. Somehow. What was she to do with a baby? She could barely keep herself going. How would she raise a child?

She had looked at her hands, and the answer was obvious, she supposed. She could not. She thought about taking Pride or even just herself, and running away. Vanishing into the wilds, far flung from the eluvian networks, and this glittering, corrupted society. And then what? Raising a baby out in the wilderness somewhere? With no clan and little knowledge of safe harbours, or even of the mechanics of the world? How could she do whatever Solas had meant for her to do while she was hiding away, making as poor of an excuse for a mother as Flemeth once had, in her tiny hut with Morrigan?

And then she thought about getting rid of it, and the yawning chasm of grief in her opened up again. Wide and black as ever, hungry for more of her losses. More of her despair. Because she _did_ want to keep it, she knew. Even as unprepared and ill-suited as she was. It was her child. It was Pride’s. She loved Pride and she would love their child, she knew, and to finally have something – to _make_ something – to have _new life_ in the face of all that loss…

But she could not.

She sat on her little bed, turning her thoughts over and over, trying to find a solution. An answer, somewhere in all of that. What should she do? What should she _do?_

She pressed a hand to her stomach.

She thought about running away. Pride would go with her, most likely. Even if he had not loved her so, he would feel guilty enough to go for that. But what life they could spare in such circumstances still seemed bleak, and doubly so if she abandoned her responsibilities. And what would their child even be in this world? Unmarked, isolated… would it be like her? Like Pride? How much difference was there, really, between the two of them?

She thought about getting rid of it. Of knowing for all the rest of her days that she’d had a spark of life in her, made with someone she loved, and that she’d snuffed it out. And every protective instinct in her balked, and her throat closed, and she could not stand it until at last a great, wrenching sob was torn out of her. Then she wrapped her arms around herself, and wept, and shook, and begged with the unkind universe. With any shred of divinity that had ever unmercifully touched it, because she could not. She could not lose anything more.

Why? Why would it do this to her? Hadn’t she suffered enough? Hadn’t it taken enough life, and devoured it whole before it could even be born?

She collapsed against her bed and then slid on down to the floor, too overcome to move, and she stayed there until morning.

And no great epiphany came.

No wondrous solution presented itself.

While the light grey in the groom, she heard footsteps halt outside her door. And they stood there, a long while, until at last there came a familiar, tentative knock.

She could not stand.

“Come in,” she called, instead. Because she knew who it was. And if she did not have the energy to stand, then she hardly had the reserves left to send him away.

The door opened.

Pride didn’t look any better than she felt, really.

Which was saying something.

He slipped into the room, and closed the door behind him. Looked at her, a moment, before reaching out and resting a tentative touch onto her shoulder.

She broke again.

Wide open.

Pride’s eyes were red and swollen, and tears slipped down his own cheeks, as he dropped to the floor and put his arms around her. She reached for him, in return. Clutching to him. Clinging as if he was her only anchor left in the world. But even then…. Even Pride was not simple. There was no steady ground, she thought. Maybe, in the end, there was no future, either. Maybe all anyone was ever doing was swimming and swimming towards some inevitable end of everything. No matter when it came or who brought it.

“I do not know what to do,” she admitted, her voice strained with emotion, with grief and fear and despair and wretched, painful hope, that only made it all worse.

Pride held her tighter. Held on until she ran out of the breath to sob, and tears to cry. For the moment, anyway. She leaned into him until she was sagging and spent. Their shirts both soaked through with the combined results of their misery.

“I love you,” he said. “I would love to have a child with you.”

 _Yes,_ she agreed.

She tightened her hold on him, just briefly.

“We cannot,” she said. Because it was true.

And his tears renewed, because he did not want it to be. Because sometimes things like this could be a blessing, but in the world she’d found, and the world she’d come from, more often than not, they ended up becoming just another injury. A possibility never realized. A wish, trapped in a dream.

Pride’s words became a litany of broken apologies.

That voice, she thought. Always so sorry. Always bringing such love and such heartbreak to her. Sharing it with her.

At length, she let out a long, long breath.

And knew that grief would gain another measure from her.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Consent to Sacrifice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359988) by [Symmet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symmet/pseuds/Symmet)




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